Rethinking Sincerity and Authenticity

The Ethics of Theatricality in Kant, Kierkegaard, and Levinas

Howard Pickett

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780813940151
• eBook ISBN: 9780813940168
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

"This above all: To thine own self be true," is an ideal—or pretense—belonging as much to Hamlet as to the carefully choreographed realms of today's politics and social media. But what if our "true" selves aren't our "best" selves? Instagram's curated portraits of authenticity often betray the paradox of our performative selves: sincerity obliges us to be who we actually are, yet ethics would have us be better.

Drawing on the writings of Immanuel Kant, Søren Kierkegaard, and Emmanuel Levinas, Howard Pickett presents a vivid defense of "virtuous hypocrisy." Our fetish for transparency tends to allow us to forget that the self may not be worthy of expression, and may become unethically narcissistic in the act of expression. Alert to this ambivalence, these great thinkers advocate incongruent ways of being. Rethinking Sincerity and Authenticity offers an engaging new appraisal not only of the ethics of theatricality but of the theatricality of ethics, contending that pursuit of one's ideal self entails a relational and ironic performance of identity that lies beyond the pure notion of expressive individualism.

PART I

KANT

Sincerity and the Problem of Imperfection

Q: What is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?

A: Well, it intensifies your personality.

Q: Yes, but what if you’re an a**hole?

—BILL COSBY, Himself

WHAT COSBY’S JOKE REVEALS, if crassly, is that there is a problem with self-congruence.¹ As I come to argue, there are three main problems with making an unqualified virtue of the agreement between what I seem to be and what I actually am. The first, considered in this opening study of Immanuel Kant, is the “Problem of Imperfection.” Modernity’s esteem for self-congruence—especially, but not exclusively, between inner thought and outer expression—assumes that the inner self is worthy of congruence and the externalization of “sincerity” in particular. What we too often forget, however, is that the self may be strikingly imperfect, in need of moral conversion and improvement before sincere expression is suitable. It may be better to hold back what one actually thinks or feels. It may be better, as it were, to “fake it”—at least “until we make it.” Paradoxically, a high standard for moral behavior, especially when combined with a recognition of our “fallen” condition, gives good reason to find sincerity simultaneously both attractive and suspect. After all, we exhort people to be sincere once we know their insincerity provides the occasion for wrongdoing. Yet our exhortations to sincerity disregard ethics’ most basic premise: we need to be or become—at the very least, we need to act—other than we are.

Part I examines this problem in light of Immanuel Kant’s writings. Chapter 1 highlights Kant’s persistent and multifaceted endorsement of self-congruence (including sincerity) as well as his corresponding condemnation of incongruence (lying, imitation, etc.). Kant articulates what may be modernity’s strongest case for self-congruence. He does so, if unexpectedly, by highlighting its central place in the constitution of moral character. Yet as chapter 2 argues, Kant acknowledges, albeit ambivalently, that incongruence also plays a vital role in the cultivation of character. Surprisingly, Kant, too, recognizes that you just might have to fake it ’til you make it. Granted, for Kant, “faking” is never sufficient for a fully formed, genuinely moral character; in the end, we ought to be moral, not just seem so. Given our imperfections, however, faking it (or something remarkably like it) may aid the development of moral character. By that light, Kant’s practical thought occasions a reconsideration of both the ethics of insincerity and the insincerity of ethics.

1

THE TROUBLE WITH LYING

Kant, Character, and Self-Congruence

A human being who lies has no character at all.

—KANT, Lectures on Pedagogy

IMMANUEL KANT’S PREOCCUPATION with self-congruence reveals itself most famously—or infamously, depending on your point of view—in his absolute prohibition against lying. However, as this first chapter demonstrates, Kant mounts a passionate, repeated, and multidimensional endorsement of self-congruence that encompasses more than the conformity between what I think and what I say. Reading through Kant’s practical philosophy—from the early ethics lectures (1762) through The Metaphysics of Morals (1797) and beyond—one finds Kant’s repeated affirmation of (1) truthfulness, (2) sincerity, (3) autonomy, and (4) character.¹ To clarify Kant’s views, the following discussion focuses on these specific forms of self-congruence: what Kant says about them and what he finds so valuable in them. It also outlines his complaints against forms of incongruence: (1) lying, (2) hypocrisy, (3) imitation, and (4) habit.

The following discussion also considers Kant’s views about four modes of self-congruence: (1) verbal (agreement between what I think and what I say); (2) volitional (agreement between what I rationally will and what I do); (3) temporal (agreement between who I was and who I am); and (4) anthropological (agreement between who I am as an individual and who I ought to be as a human). By my reading, each mode, like each form, of self-congruence plays a crucial part in what Kant arguably cares about most, moral character. On the contrary, incongruence ought to be shunned insofar as it undermines that character. For Kant, “self-congruent” is not only the right way to be; it is the properly human way to be.

Kant on Lying and Truthfulness

“The greatest violation of a human being’s duty to himself regarded merely as a moral being . . . is the contrary of truthfulness [Wahrhaftigkeit], lying [Lüge]” (MM 6:429).² With that announcement, Kant voices what may be modernity’s most influential—and most hostile—attack on incongruence. To the long-standing bewilderment of critics and supporters alike, Kant condemns all lies. In his Lectures on Pedagogy (published in 1803, the year before his death), Kant wonders “whether a white lie [Notlüge] should be permitted” (P 9:490). “No!” he concludes, since “there is not one conceivable case in which it would be excusable, and least of all before children” (P 9:490).

So objectionable is even the smallest lie that verbal dishonesty regularly takes its place in Kant’s thought as the worst of all faults, if not the root of all other faults. It is, he says, “noteworthy that the Bible dates the first crime, through which evil entered the world, not from fratricide (Cain’s) but from the first lie” (MM 6:431). In saying so, Kant anticipates a modern moral tendency to rank dishonesty or hypocrisy higher than cruelty or hostility in a catalog of vices.³ In words taken from Kant’s “On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” (1791), while “hostility” or the “lack of love” may have a “purpose whose function is yet permissible and good in certain farther connections,” there is never an acceptable, moral use for the “lie,” which is “good in no respect” (MT 8:270). And, as most undergraduate philosophy students learn, “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy” (1797) condemns all lies, even (as the title suggests) well-meaning fibs, including the one we might tell “to a murderer who asked us whether a friend of ours whom he is pursuing has taken refuge in our house” (RL 8:425).

Despite Kant’s unmistakable animosity toward lying, what remains less obvious is: (1) the prohibition’s specific target or scope and (2) its precise moral justification. To the first point, because Kant’s “lie” refers to a narrower set of acts than one might expect, Kant forbids much less than what many readers suppose; he prohibits neither all forms of deception nor, to anticipate the next chapter, all forms of incongruence. To the second point, while the liar surely does some thing wrong by mistreating others, Kant complains, above all, that lying occasions the liar’s mistreatment of herself. By violating self-congruence, the liar not only does something immoral; she becomes something immoral.⁴

WHAT IS (NOT) A LIE?

Lying is, in one critic’s summation of Kant’s view, “making an untruthful statement with the intention that that statement be believed to be true.”⁵ Because “ ‘lie’ (Lüge, mendacium) is a technical term for Kant,”⁶ readers should be careful to distinguish ordinary understandings of it from Kant’s own understanding. Likewise, readers should learn to distinguish Kant’s “lie,” which is always prohibited, from other, sometimes permissible forms of untruth or deception. For one, there is, according to James Mahon, a crucial difference in Kant’s thought between an “untrue” and an “untruthful declaration.”⁷ Unlike a merely untrue (mistakenly inaccurate) declaration, an untruthful declaration (a lie) involves intentional deception; in words taken from Kant’s 1785 ethics lectures, the untrue declaration lacks “signs indicative of thoughts that [one] does not have” (LE 27:700). Ours is, therefore, a duty of truthfulness, not truth.⁸ In Kant’s words, “One cannot always stand by the truth [wahr] of what one says to oneself or another (for one can be mistaken); however, one can and must stand by the truthfulness [wahrhaft] of one’s declaration or confession, because one has immediate consciousness of this” (MT 8:267). Because ought implies can (R 6:50), we (being the epistemically fallible human creatures we are) have a duty to say what we believe to be true, not what actually is true. In other words, we have a duty to be “sincere,” not correct.

We also have a relatively narrow duty to avoid “untruthful declarations,” rather than all “untruthful statements.”⁹ The playactor’s claim to be Prince Hamlet, for instance, is no lie, in Kant’s view, although the statement is both (a) untrue and (b) believed to be untrue by the speaker. The untruthful statement lacks the decisive intention to deceive.¹⁰ After all, the actor’s name and role appear clearly in the playbill. Therefore, the actor’s untruthful statement is something other than a lie. Furthermore, because the statement is uttered within a context that lacks the social or conventional warrant for truthfulness (i.e., from the playhouse stage), no reasonable person will be or should be misled by it.

A final useful distinction differentiates “lies of commission” (always prohibited) from “lies of omission” (sometimes permissible). Because it is not “the making an untruthful [declaration]” of any sort, the so-called “lie of omission”—a nondeclarative, typically nonverbal deception—is, properly speaking, no “lie” at all.¹¹ In Kant’s estimation, deceiving someone is not necessarily forbidden—certainly not by a prohibition against lying. While these distinctions are crucial to an understanding of Kant’s view, equally crucial is Kant’s answer to a related question: What exactly is wrong with the lie?

WHAT IS SO BAD ABOUT LYING?

Kant’s attack on liars extends from his earliest works in practical philosophy to his last. Sometimes Kant insinuates that lying is self-evidently wrong—“immediately abhorrent” (LE 27:59)—although he apparently contradicts that point elsewhere, for example when insisting on the need to teach young people to avoid it (MM 6:481).¹² Other times, Kant condemns lying, if surprisingly, for its negative consequences—because it “always harms another” (RL 8:426)— although he apparently contradicts (more charitably, downplays) that point as well, for example, when remarking that “the harm that can come to others from lying is not what distinguishes this vice” (MM 6:429).

To complicate matters, Kant condemns lying not only for different reasons but also within different domains of his practical thought. On the one hand, within his philosophy of law (what The Metaphysics of Morals calls “The Doctrine of Right”), Kant condemns the lie in its “juristic sense” insofar as the lie damages a particular other person and is, consequently, prosecutable and also in “the sense of right” insofar as it damages humanity or society as a whole (LE 27:448, 701).¹³ In this latter sense (the one at stake in Kant’s infamous essay on the “right to lie”), lying “most trenchantly separates human society, of which truth is the bond” (LE 27:59); as Kant complains in his notorious treatment of the doorstep murderer, the lie undermines human confidence in the contracts and promises that make society possible (RL 8:426). As a result of lying, our world becomes a theater of deception: “Truth is simply lost, and with it, all the happiness of mankind; everything puts on a mask [maskirt], and every indication of civility becomes a deceit; we make use of other men to our own best advantage” (LE 27:59). On the other hand, within his ethics proper (what The Metaphysics of Morals calls “The Doctrine of Virtue”), Kant condemns lying insofar as it violates moral—rather than legal or political—duties both to others and to ourselves.¹⁴

Although Kantians understandably complain about the way lying violates a perfect duty to respect the autonomy of the other,¹⁵ Kant complains, above all, about the self-violation that accompanies the lie. Tellingly, “On Lying” appears within Kant’s discussion of “duties to oneself as such” (MM 6:417, 429–31). As Kant explains elsewhere, “The lie is more an infringement of duty to oneself than to others, and even if a liar does nobody any harm by it, he is still an object of contempt, a low fellow who violates the duties to himself” (LE 27:341). In a letter to fellow philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, Kant writes, “Losing the self-respect that stems from a sense of honesty [unverstellten Gesinnung, “unfeigned disposition”] would therefore be the greatest evil that could . . . befall me” (C 10:69, emphasis added).

So troubling is self-violation that Kant shows less contempt for lying to another than for lying to oneself (i.e., through the self-deception of an inner or internal lie): “By an external lie, a human being makes himself an object of contempt in the eyes of others; by an internal lie he does what is still worse: he makes himself contemptible in his own eyes and violates the dignity of humanity in his own person” (MM 6:429, emphasis added). Granted, for Kant, the internal lie is troubling, in part, because it leads to harming others: “But such insincerity [Unlauterkeit] in his declarations, which a human being perpetrates on himself, still deserves the strongest censure, since it is from such a rotten spot (falsity [Falscheit], which seems to be rooted in human nature itself) that the ill of untruthfulness [Unwahrhaftigkeit] spreads into his relations with other human beings as well” (MM 6:430–31). Nevertheless, while my lie may sometimes harm others, its fault is not exhausted by that fact; while my lie sometimes violates particular others, it always violates me. ¹⁶

This emphasis on lying’s self-violation suits an abiding emphasis on duties to oneself in Kant’s ethics: “So far from these duties [to oneself] being the lowest, they actually take first place, and are the most important of all” (LE 27:341). Again, Kant connects self-duty and duty to others: “He who violates duties toward himself throws away his humanity, and is no longer in a position to perform duties to others” (LE 27:341). Tellingly, Kant’s treatment of duties to oneself (MM 6:417–47) is both earlier and longer than his discussion of duties to others (MM 448–73). Kant also argues that some (apparent) duties to others—specifically, nonhuman others—are actually duties to oneself, an argument he makes in his essay “On an amphiboly in moral concepts of reflection, taking what is a human being’s duty to himself for a duty to other beings” (MM 6:443). Duties to oneself are so important that, while the agent who neglects duties to others may still have worth, the self-violator has none: “A person who has performed his duties to others badly, who has not been generous, kindly or compassionate, but has observed the duty to himself . . . may still in himself possess a certain ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I. Kant: Sincerity and the Problem of Imperfection
• Part II. Kierkegaard: Sincerity and the Problem of Inexpressibility
• Part III. Levinas: Sincerity and the Problem of Individualism
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index